One Last Trick
by Sailing Saint
Summary: "I'm not trying to trick you into anything for Christ's sake!" James burst out impatiently, "Just answer the question." Her eyes narrowed and he sighed, "Looks Evans, everyone who can possibly love–"  "Are you saying I can't love?" she interrupted.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: James Potter is a male, he is a male who has been spurned his entire pubescent and post pubescent life so don't hate on me if he is not the Fabio of your dreams.

"So Evans," James Potter began huskily as they patrolled the hallways ever so seriously. She grunted in acknowledgment and kicked open a broom cupboard to glower at the gyrating couple within. She was a short, redheaded little firecracker with a sensible, feisty personality and had absolutely no patience for boys or any distractions for that matter. If her fierce pride and determination were what attracted him then her spastic movements and humor were what kept him. "Where are you keeping your love?"

She stopped dead and even the fleeing Ravenclaws sent him a look that clearly said, "What have you been smoking?"

"E-excuse me?" she spluttered, "Love? What on earth could you mean by that," he sniggered to himself and thought with a hand on his neck and all of his instincts telling him to shut the hell up. She glared up at him with vibrant, telling green eyes and a doll like frame that seemed so breakable…he almost pitied her for having to answer his question. Almost, because he most certainly needed the answer or would die forever wondering _what if_?

"You heard me," he smirked leaning against the wall and crossing his arms over his broad torso. "Where do you keep your love?" Her face hardened and those little fists at her side turned white because somehow James Potter was trying to get to her, well she'd be _damned_ if she let him! All of those times when he had publically humiliated her, made her lose Sev, lost countless dates and all of those pitying looks from her friends, her teachers…the bets everyone had as to when she would cave…

"Look Potter if you're trying to trick me –"

"I'm not trying to trick you into anything for Christ's sake!" James burst out impatiently, "Just answer the question." Her eyes narrowed and he sighed, "Looks Evans, everyone who can possibly love –"

"Are you saying I can't love?" she interrupted bitterly.

"Keeps it somewhere," James continued as if she hadn't uttered. "Sirius keeps it in his tragedies, with his brother and uses distractions to harness and use the hopeless, masochistic love to his own self-destructive advantage." Lily said nothing and was quite obviously fuming from his dared assumption that she, Evans, could not love. "He uses it in Quidditch and with women so he doesn't have to constantly dwell over the fact that he thinks he's not good enough and that he somehow failed in keeping Regulus from the wolves." Lily did not know what to say to that other than Sirius had never seemed vulnerable to her. No, he was always boisterous and laughing and never sulking over things that serious! His haunted eyes, his sunken yet angular cheeks, his sultry, brooding default face…

James hid a triumphant laugh at how his sad, peculiar, last chance plan was working, "Remus keeps his in compassion." Lily looked at him with softer eyes than before, "He knows what it's like to be unloved so he tries to love everything insight and ends up chasing happiness for everyone but himself. I suppose you could say his love is in his self-loathing compassion, he feels that even if something is wrong with him – everyone deserves love, and since he is dangerous enough to love even the biggest villains, deep down he hopes someone will love him." Lily slid down the wall and looked down at her folded legs, desperately wishing James would stop talking about love. "I suppose we're all looking for someone to love us," he said conversationally.

"And Peter?" Lily asked hopelessly. A shadow crossed James' mind but he shook his head uncomfortably and scratched his head.

"Peter finds love in protection, anything worth loving is protected or so he thinks. His body, his mind, his feelings – he's not the oaf everyone assumes." Ja-Potter sold quietly. "He finds self-love in the feeling as we Marauders who are the cream of the school, could possibly find something within him to enjoy he must be worth it. I suppose he finds outer love in people who protect him from everything such as his mother and myself."

"Why are you telling me this." It was more of a statement than a question.

"Snape," Lily's head snapped up and hard eyes bored into his, daring him to comment. "Snape found love in only one person," James said hoping she would do something! Even if it was punching him something to prove she had passion or some specific brand of feelings for him. "He finds love in fixation, in trying as hard as he possibly can but sometimes he finds love in deception." Lily's tears were silent but steadily heavier as if rain turned to buckets and dandruff to hail. She didn't have dandruff thank goodness, think about anything else…stop talking fucking Potter. Fucking Potter, why is when ever men start talking about feelings girls have the sudden inclination to…oh Merlin's mother he's still talking!

"I feel bad for him and I relate to him. So back to my question, where do you find love?"

"You forgot one Marauder," she replied in a small voice.

"That's right," his hand was at his neck again. "I find my love in saving people, I'm a conceited bastard I realize but when I save someone from the brink like my mother when dad died or like Sirius when he needed a…a well good person, when Remus needed clarification of truth in beauty and Peter needed a virtual, basically father figure…when I saw what Snape did."

"And what exactly did Snape do _Potter_?" she flared up from the old nearly forgotten habit.

"He tried to hurt Remus," James said flatly looking her unabashed in the eyes. "And no one gets away with that, I saved him but then he kept trying to hurt people I love." His eyes were burning and Lily had to look away. "A tad presumptuous to go about saying one saves people isn't it?" he chortled, "But it's true I'm insufferable."

"So that day by the lake was revenge?" Lily said through gritted teeth.

"I'm not proud of myself," James said calmly, "But he would've hurt you and was exposing you to the notice of Voldemort." She looked at the wall steadily and could barely keep from jumping his bones in lust or in anger. "Sirius hurt Remus too, he tried to hurt Snape, but I know that Sirius isn't…whole evil and neither is Snape but when it comes down to it – well, you matter more to me than Snape ever could. I made a sacrifice for him –"

"What if you caused him lasting damage? _Merlin_ listen to me, 'what if,' he had no one else James!"

"He doesn't but he _chose_ Voldemort, Lily," James said dispassionately. "It's his own fault."

"How dare you presume so far as to decide the fate of people!" Lily cried, "Selfish!"

"Selfish yes protecting those I love…even more so."

"'Selfish protecting those you love?' You don't love me James."

"I beg to differ Lily." He kept his inward self from jumping up and down at the use of his first name and tried not to stare through her shirt, to look into her heart or yet…her body. "Why would I make such an ass of myself, why would I constantly look and seek you out impossibly, why do I lose sleep over you during the holidays and why do my mates already think of you like a sister?"

"It's just an infatuation."

"I beg to differ."

"I want it to be." Lily confessed and James froze.

"What."

"I wish it were only an infatuation," she repeated. "And not something more, an obsession, a childish crush…anything else but…"

"Say it Lily," James commanded, his hand at her face at once. He began tracing the outline of her lips and his other roaming and designing shapes all over her shoulders, her arms, her legs.

"I wish it weren't-" James felt as if she stabbed him in the heart. She wished he didn't love her.

"If you wish it." He stood up and began striding away, leaving her in the shadow of his heartbreak in the tearing of his ascending flag, the brand that portrayed so obviously his love for her. The one she ripped to shreads with her wishes.

"But doesn't make it so," Lily shouted after him, "James come back. JAMES!" he stopped and she ran after him, rubbing her palms over his back and wanting him with her eyes and wishes. "I wis hit were only lust, I wish it were only crushes, I wish it were anything but what it is….and that's not right, wishing us to be different from what we are."

"Anything you want Lily but the promise that I can stop loving you." James spoke through stiff lips. She reached up and pressed her own to his, "Lil-"

"I wish we were perfect but we aren't and won't be but I'm glad I'm myself and tonight…I met someone I've dreamt of since I was a little girl and that scares the crap out of me. James, do I love you?"

"Is that even a question?"

"Just kiss me you stupid, great oaf."

"As you wish my lady."

R&R?

My first completed piece on this account


	2. Chapter 2

I've decided to condense this story with my upcoming _Big Bang, The Reason I'm Alive_, so stay tuned and thank you my fabulous reviewers! And as ever reviews give me inspiration to do the impossible like finish my stories quickly.


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